The 'DeMinted' Attack on Birth Control

Just catching up on all my RSS and found out that last Friday South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint sponsored an amendment to the budget. Among the many anti-contraceptive items, the most heinous is his insistence "that birth control prices be 900% higher for college women than they were previously."

900% higher?!

Apparently this is just the latest of many attacks on contraception; others being lead by the catholic church, the religious right, or just republicans in general.

Going back a little further on the problem... The problem started when Bush removed college health centers, private birth control clinics, and some safety net health clinics (including about a quarter of Planned Parenthoods) from the discounted drug programs. He did it in 2005 with the Federal Deficit Reduction Act, and afterward claimed he didn't intend to remove them; but sat by idly while birth control pills shot from $5 per month to $50.

The Prevention First Act (S. 21 and H.R. 463), and similar legislation proposes improving access to contraception; including getting the groups Bush excluded back into the discounted drug programs.

Opponents are calling it an "abortion bailout" and DeMint says lowering the cost of birth control is an "earmark" for Planned Parenthood. Also part of Demint's amendment is to remove the Affordable Birth Control Act ("which requires no expenditure but simply reinstates college health centers and other safety net clinics back into the discounted drug pricing program"). One of Demint's arguments is "that by reestablishing the prices discount for birth control these health centers will keep the cost-savings for themselves and charge women the same inflated prices." Since most of them are non-profit organization, where would he pull an idea like that from? Maybe his own mind with a thought like 'well that's what I would do.'

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As a college-age girl who is also on birth control, this is very irritating! I used to get my stuff through the college health center...but when there was talk of raising the prices to 20-30 bucks a month, I had to look elsewhere. When you are on such a tight budget like most college students are, that is more than we can afford.

Now I take my sexual health very seriously and researched my options. I found that a lot of states have programs that help women pay for family planning services. However...a lot of girls this age are dumb, lazy, or just ignorant. Many girls who can't afford birth control will simply stop using it.

Doesn't he realize that not being able to afford contraceptives isn't going to make the majority of girls stop having sex? It is just going to make them have less safe sex. These people need to realize that no matter how hard they try, people are going to have sex. They might as well fund contraception, because lets face it: a girl who can't afford contraception probably also can't afford a child. And I'm pretty sure welfare is more expensive for the country than contraceptive funding.

You know what pisses me off? I'm in a country that can almost be considered third world. Abortion is illegal, and yet the pill costs between $2-15 for basic to high end. A 5 year IUD/Hormone implant cost me $200. Condoms are sold in the open anywhere, right at the counter by gum even.
There are safe sex posters sponsored by the government everywhere....and in a country that has one of the biggest sex trades on earth not to mention one of the highest populations of gay males, the HIV rate is the same as America. Maybe even a little lower.
I want to line up these idiots and do one big group SLAP
...upside their head
...with a used condom.